March 26, 2008

Yeniseic - Na-Dene linguistic link

A previous post on Kets and other northern Eurasians. Interestingly, the Kets belong overwhelmingly to Y-haplogroup Q, the major Native American Y-haplogroup, with the remainder being mostly C, the other Y-haplogroup found in Native Americans.

His research links the Old World language family of Yeniseic in central Siberia with the Na-Dene family of languages in North America.

The Yeniseic family includes the extinct languages Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, and Pumpokol. Ket is the only Yeniseic language spoken today. Less than 200 speakers remain and most are over 50, according to Vajda.

"Within a couple of generations, Ket will probably become extinct," he said.

1 comment:

That post comes as no surprise!Physical anthropology has indicated the presence of various Mongoloid types in the area, among them also there was a type similar to the ancestors of Na Dene and Amerindians.In the Central Asian steppe both Europoids and Mongoloids were found.Craniological variant occurring in the cattle-breeding tribes in the II millennium BC on the territories of the Southern Tadzhikistan, Southern and Southwestern Turkmenistan, and Northern Iran represents the "Kurgan" Europoid component. In the epochs followed, this variant disappears from the territory of the Western and Middle Asia. It was suggested that the carriers of this morphological complex have been few and gradually assimilated into the mass of Eastern-Mediterranean Europoids. The Mongoloid component includes two anthropological types. One type, autochthonous, has been found on the Altai territory on the boundary of Neolithic and Eneolithic periods in the people buried in the Nizhnetitkeskenskaya and Kaminnaya caves and in the second half of the II millennium BC in Karakol Culture population. The typical combination of anthropological parameters characteristic of this type is similar to Southern-Siberian race complex, met currently in Kazakh, Kirgiz peoples, and certain groups of Khakas and Southern-Altaian peoples. The second type, Paleosiberian, dominated on the territory near Baikal during the Neolithic period. Currently, it occurs only in Evenki people in Northern Baikal region.

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